Deadline
By Chris Crutcher

About two weeks after his eighteenth birthday, a month and a half before he begins his senior year, Ben Wolf gets some bad news during his cross-country physical – he has one year to live due to a rare, aggressive blood disease. Wanting to live as normal a life as possible during the time he has left, Ben decides to refuse treatment for the disease and to not tell anyone what’s going on, not even his brother, Cody, who he is close to, or his parents since his mother has problems of her own and not wanting to burden the family any further. What he does decide on is to go out as a flash instead of as a “slowly cooling ember.” He goes out for the football team, attempts to give his closed-minded American Government/Current Events teacher a daily migraine, and help the town drunk clean up his act. Then there’s Dallas Suzuki who has been the “single prey in the crosshairs of [Ben’s] Cupid’s bow” for the last three years but is way, way out of his league. With the successes and surprises the year brings to Ben, and his disease beginning to take its toll, he begins to wonder if he was right in his decision to not tell anyone about the disease and what will happen when he does tell the truth. Although this is the kind of story where the ending is known at the beginning it is the journey the reader goes on with Ben that makes the book so enjoyable to read. Crutcher uses the right combination of humor and drama to tell the story that, by the end, are blended smoothly together without one element overpowering the other. There are some mildly mature issues discussed such as child molestation, teenage motherhood, and some racism and brief language and sexual dialogue, though all this is tamed enough for a teenage audience. This thought-provoking, moving story is highly recommended.